ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Danny Smith is the Global Agentic Commerce Solutions Lead at Stripe, where he runs technical go-to-market (think pre-sales architect, not engineering) for Stripe’s agentic commerce products. One of his first projects was adding the payments layer to Amazon’s Rufus shopping assistant, and three years ago he got on stage at Stripe Sessions to talk about agentic commerce.
We recorded this one live from day two of RetailClub in Huntington Beach. It was a little overcast, which after a day of baking in the sun, we didn’t mind at all. Jason Goldberg joined me as co-host, and we grabbed Danny between meetings. It was his first time at the show.
Danny’s a first-timer, both on the pod and at RetailClub. This week’s episode is a product deep dive: Stripe has been shipping agentic commerce products at a pace that makes three months ago feel like ancient history. Danny walks us through what’s live, what launched last Monday, and what’s coming soon, including how the checkout Scot kept seeing inside Meta’s new Muse app actually works.
Jason brings the payments-industry history. It goes back to when card-not-present transactions were illegal and runs up to Stripe’s jump from developer darling to incumbent. We also get into the thing that’s still breaking agentic commerce today, and it isn’t the agents.
Along the way there’s a hallucinating agent, a leather jacket, and a Cheeky Pint swag request. Hit play.
Highlights
- 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: A skill you teach any agent (Claude, GrokBot, your homebrew Hermes agent) so it can pay “in a guarded and secure manner.” Details at link.com/agents.
- “𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗣𝗜 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲”: Developers really do stop Danny at conferences to ask for a photo. Stripe’s founders’ mantra: “Let’s win all startups, and then let’s go win them again.”
- 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘆: Changing payments at an enterprise is “like open heart surgery.” Jason adds that it’s open heart surgery while you’re running a marathon.
- 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱’𝘀 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝘁𝗼𝗸𝗲𝗻: Stripe’s shared payment tokens launched with OpenAI, and Etsy was the first merchant. Link wraps them as a single-use virtual card capped at the amount you budgeted, so the merchant doesn’t have to be on Stripe.
- 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗽𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: Launched last Monday and built on WebMCP, it makes human checkouts machine-readable at the same time. Stripe merchants on hosted checkout or invoices get it with no extra work.
- 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗯𝗠𝗖𝗣 𝗻𝘂𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀: 42% fewer tokens burned, 38% fewer tool calls, and 39% faster checkout. “Three seconds is annoying to a human, 800 milliseconds is beyond annoying to an agent.”
- 𝗗𝗼𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗲𝗯 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰: Through the Agentic Commerce Suite (ACS), some merchants have doubled their web traffic in three or four months just by getting their catalogs in front of agents. Instant checkout on Gemini is expected around late October.
- 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝘃𝘀. 𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿: Most merchants are bouncers that block all bot traffic, and bots were already 53% of internet traffic in 2024. Stripe is working on protocols to tell good bots from bad ones.
Stripe is building both sides of the agentic transaction, and Danny is the one out there getting retailers across the line. Enjoy the conversation.
Timeline
00:27 Welcome to Retailgentic
01:44 Live from Retail Club, day two
02:05 Meet Danny Smith, Stripe
02:38 From cloud architect to Stripe
03:48 Adding payments to Amazon's Rufus
04:55 Stripe launches agentic commerce
06:08 Jason on payments history & developer-first Stripe
07:40 "Your API changed my life"
08:40 Enterprise payments = open heart surgery
09:05 Meta Muse and the Link checkout
10:25 What is Link Wallet for Agents?
11:00 The weekend Meta scramble
12:20 GrokBot, Instinct & the pipeline
13:55 How Link works at non-Stripe merchants
14:35 The model airplane story
15:40 The world's first agentic token
16:05 Stripe Checkout for Agents & WebMCP
17:10 Two sides of the same coin
17:55 Agentic Commerce Suite & doubled traffic
20:55 WebMCP numbers: 42% fewer tokens
22:10 The leather jacket that got blocked
23:50 Doorman vs. bouncer
25:10 Danny's first Retail Club
26:30 Wrap
👉 Connect with Danny: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danny-r-smith/
👉 Learn more about Stripe: https://stripe.com
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